1. Technical Field
This application relates to an automatic refill system for refilling a pre-paid account of a telecommunications customer, and in particular, an automatic refill system that implements multiple different refill channels for refilling the pre-paid account.
2. Related Art
Telecommunication customers purchase service plans from telecommunication service providers. The service plan often specifies the amount of time available under the service plan, the cost of call time through the service plan, the telecommunications services that the customer may use (e.g., long distance calling and text messaging), and additional charges incurred when the customer exceeds the time allotted under the service plan. To track the telecommunication customer's usage of the service plan, a telecommunication provider establishes one or more customer accounts associated with the telecommunication customer. A customer account typically includes information about the customer such as demographic information, service plan information, and the customer's billing history. The customer account is usually stored in a database of customer accounts, and is generally only accessible to the telecommunication service provider.
As the telecommunication customer uses time under the service plan, an equal or proportionate amount of time is subtracted from the remaining time balance in the telecommunication customer's service plan. Some service plans associate a monetary value with telecommunication service usage, and instead of (or in addition to) tracking elapsed time under the service plan, the telecommunication customer spends down the remaining monetary balance in the telecommunication customer's service plan. In either scenario, once the telecommunication customer has used the time or monetary amount available under the service plan, the telecommunication customer must purchase additional time or add to the remaining monetary balance. Funding the customer account is often a time consuming process, a difficult process for less technologically adept customers, and a frustrating process for customers who forget to fund their account in a timely manner to avoid frequent and irritating service interruption.
Funding the account also poses significant technical problems. For example, a telecommunication service provider may not know when or by how much to refill a customer's service plan without constantly bothering the customer. As another example, technical challenges exists with regard to extending legacy telecommunication service provider architectures to evolve in complex ways to support flexible funding options. Even if flexible funding options were available, the technical problem exists of establishing a flexible, efficient, and robust mechanism for configuring the telecommunication service provider to implement the flexible funding options.
Another technical problem exists with configuring a telecommunication service provider to flexibly distinguish between and process multiple customer types, including corporate customers and family customers. A corporation may purchase a service plan for its employees or the head of a household may purchase a service plan for the family members. However, the employees or family members may not have the ability or authorization to refill the service plan after or immediately before the service plan is depleted. Thus, when an employee or family member depletes the service plan, that employee or family member deprives the other employees or family members of the ability to use the service plan, and furthermore, must contact the employer or head of household to refill the service plan. In other words, a technical problem exists with respect to funding a customer account by a related customer. There are technical challenges associated with solving the problem of how to allow a related customer to fund a specific account, including how to resolve which account (e.g., the employee's (pre-paid) or the employer's (post-paid)) to bill to refill a service plan.
Hence, there is a need for a system that addresses the problems noted above and others previously experienced.